


the inherent eroticism of romantic rivalry

by hyalinos



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Alternate Universe - Boarding School, F/F, Love Triangles, Unrequited Love, and then there is a kiss, to be clear this is mostly ianthe and gideon being dumb over harrow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:40:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25833652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyalinos/pseuds/hyalinos
Summary: “People keep falling for her anyways, you know,” Gideon says. “I’ve seen it happen. Girls always end up tripping over themselves at her feet and she doesn’t even see it happening.”“Harry’s charming, in her own way,” Ianthe says, canting her head like they’re sharing an inside joke. Gideon hates that she gets it.*Or, Gideon and Ianthe commiserate.
Relationships: Ianthe Tridentarius/Gideon Nav
Comments: 15
Kudos: 106





	the inherent eroticism of romantic rivalry

The worst crime Ianthe Tridentarius has ever committed is making the stupid First House uniform look good. 

Gideon still remembers the jolt of searing resentment she felt at seeing Harrow in that  _ thing  _ the first time: all knobby knees under a too-short skirt, pleated, the thin loop of a ribbon around her thin neck looking like it’ll lop her head off entirely, the stark black buttons leading down her creamy blouse the only remainder of that familiar colour on her entire person. She’d taken to black tights after that first day. Gideon sometimes gets a flash of that singular glance of Harrow’s naked knees and is, is order: infuriated, turned on, infuriated about being turned on by the sight of Harrow’s fucking knees what is  _ wrong  _ with her, guilty about being turned on because surely it was kind of skeevy to be that into the girlish school uniform vibe of it all, then, lastly, haunted by the image for the rest of her day. 

Point is, Harrow looks awful in it. 

The next point is, Ianthe has no right looking as good as she does, socks pulled thigh high with just enough of a gap to make it obvious that she’s riffing off the stereotype on  _ purpose.  _ It’s practically obscene. 

She has a foot wedged right in the space between Gideon’s dorm’s door and its doorframe, easily countering Gideon’s attempt to slam it right in her face. 

“Tridentarius,” Gideon says. 

Ianthe sneers. “Move.” 

In response, Gideon mashes her foot with the door harder. “What do you want?” she bites out, desperately trying not to let the state of utter confusion and disorientation that is Ianthe Tridentarius at her door show on her face. Mostly she thinks she’s pulling it off, if only because her mouth feels stretched in some truly strange places by the grimace she’s wearing. 

“Let me in,” Ianthe growls, one hand shoving back at the door with surprising strength. 

“ _ No, _ ” says Gideon. 

“No, she says,” Ianthe repeats mockingly. Before getting her entire shoulder into the crack and managing to wiggle her way into the room. Like the worm she is. “Do you have anything worth drinking in here?” she asks idly while she swans her way around Gideon’s room like she owns the place. 

Gideon lives alone. Gideon lives alone and wears pants thank you and is  _ allowed  _ to keep her hair short after the first time she shaved it all off in rebellion and Gideon gets mostly left that way due to some freak accident that has kept her largely off the radar of the administration. 

Ianthe regards the various titty magazines splayed out over the floor with her classic lip curling disgust. By which Gideon means, every expression Ianthe is capable of making is automatically lip curlingly disgusting. Fucking creepy, swanning through the room with her back so straight it’s like someone took a metal rod and shoved it hard enough up her ass that it was propping up her whole spine. 

She manages to make a beeline to where Gideon’s stash is, where, regrettably, all that stands is a single bottle of Smirnoff Ice. 

“God,” Ianthe says, packing nearly as much scorn in that single syllable as Harrow is capable of. “Shouldn’t be surprised you’d enjoy this swill, Nav.” 

“Ha _ ha, _ ” Gideon says. “Can we go back to the part where you tell me why you’re making me risk certain disease by being in your radioactive presence?” 

“Hold on,” Ianthe says. She picks up the bottle with two fingers, makes another one of her faces, and then chugs. Gideon blinks in astonishment. Her terrible, pale, cyanosed throat moves in great effort. When she finishes off the half bottle, her offensively pink tongue pokes out to lick her lips clean, and Gideon kind of wants to punch her. “Okay,” she says. “That did nothing for me.” With a petulant little sigh, she tosses the empty bottle to bounce away in the corners of Gideon’s room, then flounces onto the bed. 

That ridiculously short skirt rides up her thighs when she crosses her legs, slouching forward with her knife of a chin resting in the palm of her hand. 

“Unfortunately,” she finally starts, “you’re the one who knows Harry best. So. I suppose I’m here to ask a favour of you, Gideon Nav.” 

Gideon blinks. 

“Wait,” she says. “Don’t move.” 

Gideon manages, triumphantly, to bring out her phone and snap a photo all in the span of time it takes for Ianthe to raise a single eyebrow in drawling, laconic disdain. Vital to preserve the moment: Ianthe Tridentarius, asking for help. All over Harrowhark fucking Nonagesimus. Gideon could die of absolute glee at the very idea. 

“Do you want me to laugh in your face now or after you tell me what’s going on?” Gideon asks. 

Ianthe’s smile is thin. “What’s going on is that I’ve managed to get further than you ever have in all eighteen years of your miserable life, Nav.” 

“You say that like I’ve been gagging for Harrow and not like I hate her guts. And her bones. And her general essence of being.” 

This time, Ianthe raises two eyebrows. 

“Look,” says Gideon through gritted teeth, “just tell me what you want.” 

Ianthe picks at some spare threads on Gideon’s sheets, a divot in between her eyebrows. “Nonagesimus is a Gordian knot of a person.” 

“Mmhm.” 

“She confounds me.” 

“ _ Mmmm _ hm.” 

“She spends all night leaning into me and practically begging me to put a hand on her, kisses  _ me  _ first the little rat, and then suddenly it’s all  _ Tridentarius what are you doing?  _ and  _ are you mocking me? _ ” 

“Sounds like a shitty party.” 

“Oh, it was terrible.” 

“Tell me more.” 

“Our mutual enemy Harrowhark decided to get very drunk and maybe a little high, I’m not sure what was in those brownies at the Pent house, and then proceeded to nuzzle up against me all night, and so, because I am generous and beautiful and a most virtuous soul, I let her sleep in my room, upon which she woke up the next morning, untouched and horrified. At herself? Me? I couldn’t tell you.” Part of the sheet rips away in Ianthe’s fingers. Gideon hears the tiny tear of it,  _ rrrrrrrip,  _ just like that and just that quick, and thinks she understands. 

“Hey,” she says, in a moment of rare and startling solidarity with the vilest person she has ever had the misfortune to know on this festering planet. 

As if sensing Gideon’s charity and feeling threatened by it, Ianthe smiles. “Did you know that she makes this little sound when you pet those little flyaway hairs at the nape of her neck? Is she part cat? Have you ever checked her for whiskers?” Her teeth are very white, like she knows exactly what she’s doing. Too bad: Gideon knows, too. 

“Here’s the thing about Harrow,” Gideon says bluntly, “she’s a fucking magician.” 

“What a surprise,” Ianthe says, blinking lazily like the apex predator she is, “Gideon Nav, not making a lick of sense.” 

Gideon rolls her eyes. Despite her malice, Ianthe has not made the move to leave. She is, likely despite herself, here to receive Gideon’s great wisdom in the art of Being Singlemindedly Devoted To Harrowhark Nonagisemus With No Promise Of Reciprocation. Lucky for her, Gideon’s an expert. 

“I think she’s in love with a ghost,” Gideon says. 

Ianthe narrows her eyes, rather shrewishly. “What.” 

“You know that old story about how this place was founded?” Gideon finds herself saying. It’s ridiculous. She barely recognizes the words coming out of her own mouth. “I think she buys it, all those haunted school rumours.” 

“Who’s to say they’re untrue,” Ianthe says, shrugging.

“Uh,” says Gideon. “Me.” 

“Well we all know you’re a pea-brained protozoan,” Ianthe says obligingly. “I wouldn’t expect anything more.” 

“Harrow’s in love with this place, and its stories, and nothing else,” Gideon presses on, waving her hands. “She’s never wanted anything else. If you could resurrect Alecto’s bones from the ground and glue them all into a skeleton, she would fuck it I’m pretty sure. I mean, to be fair, she’d fuck a regular skeleton too, but that’s besides the point. When we were younger, she used to visit the grave like it was her religion. I’m telling you, there’s something  _ wrong  _ with her.” 

The look on Ianthe’s face is very flat, very placid, and very calm. Gideon wonders for two seconds what’s going on beneath the porcelain death mask of an expression, then decides very quickly she does not particularly want to simulate the slimy workings of Ianthe’s mind and abandons the train of thought. She is sitting very still, a portrait of one of those sexy ghosts that horny men will dream up and make inappropriate Halloween costumes for, translucent and malevolent and oh so poised on the edge of Gideon’s unlaundered sheets, stained with bits of honey garlic wing sauce and pimple juice. 

“Is that the extent of what you can dredge up from your tiny little brain, oh wise one?” Ianthe says. She sounds like she is putting in great effort to sound like she does not care. 

Gideon is, admittedly, strangely happy about this entire situation. It has made her entire weekend in a way she doesn’t have the word for, only that she wants to invite Ianthe out to one of the shitty bars available in the two whole streets of town that are within walking distance of campus and then challenge her to a game of darts. 

“People keep falling for her anyways, you know,” Gideon says. “I’ve seen it happen. Girls always end up tripping over themselves at her feet and she doesn’t even see it happening.” 

“Harry’s charming, in her own way,” Ianthe says, canting her head like they’re sharing an inside joke. Gideon hates that she gets it. 

“I told you,” Gideon insists. “She’s a wizard. A pied piper, but, like, for lesbians. A goddamn sapphomancer.” 

Ianthe smiles like the cheshire cat. Like the haze of noxious gas, personified, and she’s just caught the canary in her teeth. “A challenge  _ I  _ am going to win, then.” 

Gideon snorts. “Sure. Go ahead and think that.” 

When she rises from the bed, Ianthe’s legs go on for eons. You could start from the bottom and they would not end until the heat death of the universe arrived. Gideon wants to snap them like toothpicks. Gideon wants to strangle her with the strands of her slippery looking hair, so bone bleached she looks like she’s suffering from something that prematurely ages her. 

“One last thing, then,” Ianthe says, all airy and bloodless. 

Gideon juts her chin out. “What.” 

And then Ianthe steps forward, and kisses her. It is not a deep kiss. Ianthe’s lips are as carefully casual as she is, sliding over Gideon’s like the slip of a blade between two ribs. It is not a wet kiss. Ianthe’s mouth is cold and reptilian, not even cushioned with gloss. Gideon’s blood could freeze over with how much passion is in this single kiss that Ianthe has felt the need to bestow upon her. But she’s caught unawares, barely able to splutter and shove her away before Ianthe puts two fingers right on the underside of Gideon’s chin, and then her knees go weak in a different way. 

So sue her. It’s been a while since Gideon’s gotten attention from, like, a living and debatably human girl. 

Ianthe steps away first, though her creepily large and unblinking eyes are still very close. Gideon is faint with the particular sensation of having been hit in the back of the head by a two by four, dazed and a little like she’s lost something, here. There are still fingers on her face, gripping her chin now, lightly. 

“Hm,” says Ianthe. “Hmmmmmm.” 

Gideon goes cross-eyed trying to look at her. 

“I suppose,” Ianthe muses. She turns Gideon’s face this way and that, and Gideon’s own brain finally kicks in with enough energy to say, hey, wait, I don’t like that actually, and she locks her jaw. Pulls away. 

Ianthe only answers with a tiny huff of a laugh. “There you are,” she murmurs. “Good old Gideon Nav, my reliable brute.”

Gideon can only stare, open-mouthed. 

“Thank you for that,” Ianthe says, and Gideon can’t tell if the sincerity is yet another mindfuck. “I think I get it now.” 

Then, she nods to herself once again, and swans away again. She leaves Gideon’s room nearly exactly like she found it, and it’s not like one extra empty shitty vodka bottle is going to make much of a difference in the overall mess of the place. 

If Gideon pokes her head out the door to watch her sashay down the fucking hallway, that’s between her and the undead ghost of Harrow’s unwavering goddess. 


End file.
